The Heart of Darkness
by GothicReaper
Summary: AU/ While Garrus mourns the death of the human Spectre who had claimed his heart, Lazarus Station is raided by Collectors. With their most influental opponent gone and the races struggling for unity, the Reapers launch their attack. When Shepard finally wakes and finds that her life is not her own anymore, she realizes that there are fates worse than dying. Much worse.
1. Chapter: Awakening to a dying world

**AN:** okay, I probably listened "Ghost Assassin" one time too many but the youtube vid totally inspired me to this shorty. Any similarities are of course purely coincidentally, Sarah K. is all awesome on her own *wink*.

Enjoy!

* * *

"Hey Commander, can you unplug me?  
Just for a minute, I need some privacy."  
Headset off and stretch her neck out  
Down the rocks to her head's safe house

Yeah I remember it all  
Bleed and shout out my calls  
The air was so dusty  
Her armor getting rusty  
She found thoughts she never had  
Her young ones were just as bad  
She winced out her weapon

I don't want to know what she did  
She is not who I am  
At least that's what I thought  
Now I'm second guessing  
I can't put my gun down  
My suit's getting heavy  
Something wants to be released  
Something dark inside me

_Maduk ft. Veela - Ghost Assassin_

* * *

**Chapter 1 ~ Awakening to a dying world**

Dreams.

It was the first kind of _anything_ that returned to her as she floated in a state of bodiless tranquility. There in the depths of her own mind she could dream about the peace of sleeping in his arms. The light he had brought to her heart at a time where she believed that there was nothing but shadows.

Time was difficult in this place but at one point there had started to be voices. Muffled and low but still voices. She sometimes thought they were even talking to her. And then there was warmth. And pain, but it was distant. It didn't matter. She still had the dreams that sheltered her.

This feeling that had uncoiled in her when she kissed him and his hands had run down her bare back. When she pulled him in and he had softly growled her name, betraying such a tenderness hiding underneath all his hot fierceness… Could it be? Could this exhilarating madness that made her trust him beyond any conditions be… love?

She was still picking at the strange thought when the voices suddenly turned loud. Then scared. Frantic. The calm broke apart but she couldn't wake! She tried to lift her arms but didn't know how. Voices turned into screams. Flashes of light sparked behind her eyes. Movement. The warmth vanished and was replaced by ice. Harsh guttural sounds erupted all around her; spiking fear like needles in her.

That was when the pain came. Pain like she had never felt before, not even…

Not even when she died.

Her head. Her back. Her hands. The agony pushed into every cell, ate at every nerve ending. Like a fire scorching away her very being. And eventually it even shattered her dreams; ripped them away from her, replacing them with hellish nightmares and something so dark and horrible it made her wanting to shriek out her soul.

Only… She had no tongue to scream in this place.

Bit by bit she felt how her sanity broke apart, how her mind failed to withstand the pressure that slowly grinded her to dust.

And then the darkness consumed her.

* * *

~V~

* * *

The head lying on his chest stirred and those curious human hairs tickled his skin.

Lazily Garrus trailed his hand along the gentle curve of her waist and hip, all down to her thighs. She sighed softly, flexing the leg that still rested on his abdomen in what he thought a quite… inspiring way.

He chuckled softly. Who would have thought human bodies could be so intriguing. This evening had certainly taken a turn Garrus would have never believed to happen outside those private little fantasies stored away for sleepless nights. And yet… there she was; lying naked and sweaty in the turian's arms, her fingers following the hard outlines of his skin plates.

Her blocky teeth nipped playfully at his chest and he couldn't stop the small growl from forming in his throat. Perhaps they would all die on Ilos tomorrow.

He couldn't care less.

She lifted her head, and Garrus brushed aside the loose strands of sun-colored hair. Green eyes deep enough to swallow him and his soul forever watched him and then Shepard gave the turian one of her rare smiles; cordial angel and wicked demon all rolled up into one mischievous grin.

"You still think you can keep up with me, huh?"

Garrus tightened the hold he had on her body and rolled her onto her back. He licked the side of her neck, savoring the taste of her skin. Then he winked at her.

"A challenge, Shepard? Terrific."

Gunfire over shouts intruded on his sleep and for a few moments Garrus struggled to keep the dream from vanishing, to hold on the _feel_ of her just a little while longer but… But aside from the turian, the cot within the small dark tent was empty.

_As is had been for three spirit-forsaken years. _

Three years and he still couldn't forget. Neither the taste of her skin nor the sound of her voice. Let alone the feel of her lips or the…

He groaned and grabbed for his Mantis. The loud booms of Menae's last remaining GARDIAN shook the air. The Reapers were getting bolder by the day. He was still in his armor and quickly crawled out of the tent and into the hell that had taken to dictate the lives of simply _every_one.

* * *

~V~

* * *

_WAKE._

She woke into a murky yellow light, her vision too blurred to make out anything. The feel of being trapped surged in her mind. She lifted her hands and met resistance. Walls. There was a slick wall all around her. And her vision… It wasn't off, she was swimming in some liquid. She was in a tank of some sort! Her fingertips burned as if someone had pulled out the nails with pincers but she kept searching for a handle, a rift, anything to open her prison. Nothing. She pounded with her fists against the barrier. She tried to shout but something was blocking her throat!

In panic she lashed out with her biotics. The walls burst open and she dropped forward in a gush of liquid, her limps too weak to stop her fall. Now it was tears that blurred her sight and she ripped at the mask covering her mouth. Tubes! There were tubes attached to it! Coughing and gagging, she pulled out three long tubes that had been stuck in her throat. She retched but nothing happened. Her body... it was hurting everywhere. With a shudder she curled up on the wet cold ground and squeezed her eyes shut. Her memory was too fuzzy to have any idea about where she was. Or who she was. And yet there was something inside her that was afraid about what she would find if she looked around. Eventually she lifted her head looking back over her shoulder.

At an alien elongated structure, looking like a huge amber colored egg that had merged with brown and black tubes and tech. Not a tank. A cocoon of some sort. Next to the one she had broken free off where others. Smaller ones; _growing_ along the wall of a hall of some sort as far into each direction as she could look in the dim light.

_Not the Normandy that's for sure…_

_Nor… what?_

Before her mind could puzzle together another piece of information, she heard a soft shuffling sound. Her head whipped around. There in shadows perhaps twenty paces away from her, eyes reflected the light in a bluish glow.

As her vision adjusted to the dark she could make out more of the creatures, human shaped but twisted by tech beyond any recognition. One of them cocked its head as if listening and somehow her mind could place a name upon it.

Husk.

Everywhere husks.

She scrambled to feet but something was wrong with her balance and she stumbled backwards. There she caught herself against the broken shell of the cocoon.

Biomass merged with tech. Not any tech.

Reaper tech.

Her thoughts raced. The husks were still watching her, some of them crouching down like hounds awaiting the command to kill.

Suddenly a ripple went through them and something pushed its way towards her. It was a being she had never seen before, a bulky chitineous body topped with a triangular insect-like head with four glowing eyes.

Frozen in shook she stared at the creature. Not because it was a myth coming to live. Not because its race had sparked the painful memory of a ship torn apart. And not because it bowed its oversized head to her. She stared because she could _feel_ the creature in her mind.

All of them.

Her head spun and she lifted her hands to rub her temples. Instead of nails her fingers ended in claws. She frowned at them, despite the strong feeling that they were _supposed_ to be here. Her eyes wandered further up her arms. It was too dark to make out details but great parts of her skin seemed to have been etched away to show metallic implants underneath. The image of a tall grey skinned male turian with similar implants flickered but she couldn't understand its meaning. She twisted her arm a bit. There. Merged into her right upper arm was a piece of armor with a letter and number.

This one she _did_ remember.

The vessel, that once had been Shepard, screamed.


	2. Chapter: The root of all regret

**Chapter 2 ~ The root of all regret**

With a hoarse curse, Garrus slashed his combat knife through the throat of the lean creature that had once been a turian woman. Black blood gushed and he forced himself to watch how the mad light faded from her eyes. He looked up and at burning world. His home. The thick columns of smoke wound around the planet's atmosphere like snakes choking their prey. Black tiny specks floated in the haze, each a Reaper who could kill not dozens but hundreds if not thousands in one go. Occasionally explosions flashed. He hadn't received word from his family for weeks now but he couldn't afford to dwell on the implications. So he simply kept staring at the ruins of his people. This was why they fought. This was why the Reapers_ must_ be stopped. Yet with each passing day it was getting harder and harder not to lose faith in the face of the sheer endless numbers the Reapers threw at them. The protheans had resisted for years. As it was, this cycle would be done in another six months.

_If we only had more time…_

He shook his head and cleaned the blade as best as he could on a piece of cloth that was already soaked with black stains. Time wouldn't change that not even with all their lives at stake the Citadel races had been able to get over their petty squabbles and agree on uniting against a common enemy. The Council had refused to see reason after Ilos and when the Reapers started to pour in through the relay in the Bahak system it was too late.

Garrus sheathed the knife and scanned the camp. The attack had come in the hour before dawn but the enforcement that had arrived in the previous evening from outpost Teatrus had left them with enough troops to break the assault. Nevertheless it had been a tight run; they had managed to overrun the eastern barricade. Still, if Garrus hadn't given the order to abandon Teatrus, they would have surely lost both posts. Garrus hadn't expected to be in command any time soon but with Corinthus and his high-ranked officers dead… Well, in a war like this a soldier might raise high within the course of one single day.

One of his officers waved his hand. It was Talid, one of his Comm Specialists and his second-in-command now. He must have returned from Menae's command center late in the night but the fighting had kept Garrus from catching up with him so far. Garrus nodded, then picked up his empty Phaeston rifle and jogged over, but not before snatching up a few clips from the armory.

"What's the status, Talid?"

"No casualties, Sir, but Arenya and two infantry soldiers from Teatrus are injured severely. Averius… He says they won't last through the night."

Garrus suppressed the need to curse. He was in command now, his soldiers _needed_ to see that he was calm and in control of regardless what happened. Still, the loss of Arenya would weaken their defenses considerably and everybody knew it. She was the strongest of the three cabals he had left and their biotics had saved the outpost on more than one occasion.

"Have we received word from any of the other systems?"

Comm Officer Talid shifted his feet. Then he said, "Thessia and Sur'Kesh have fallen."

Rubbing his temples, Garrus released a long breath. "I see." _More banshees. Bloody hell. _"There aren't any good news for a change, are they?"

"High Command had decided to pull back the rest of their remaining fleet before the system was overrun. Dalatrass Linron wasn't so reasonable. I don't think we will ever see any salarian troops again."

"Damn it! These are your good news?"

"No, but that the asari agreed to support the other battlefronts is."

Garrus snorted. "Typical. Now that there's nowhere else for them to go they're willing to talk. Do you know if Palaven requested troops?"

"They did indeed, but I fear most of their units will be sent to this classified project lead by Doctor T'Soni." The Comm Officer lowered his voice. "Do you think the rumor is true? That they can build a weapon to end this war?"

"I don't know, Talid. But I know that Dr. T'Soni wouldn't be so committed if she doesn't believe that it will work…"

It wasn't the truth. Deep down in his heart Garrus knew that this was a war they had already lost three years ago. Still, his words seemed to straighten the Comm Officer's posture a bit and that was the only thing that counted.

"Actually, there is more: this human paramilitary, Cerberus, yes? They finally came around and decided to pitch in their resources as well."

Garrus frowned. He didn't trust Cerberus. He had seen their facilities and what they were capable of. Unfortunately, it also had given him a good idea how insanely deep their pockets had to be and terrorists or not, at this point he even would have gladly put up with a bunch of krogans, acting in a manner appropriate to people who had embraced the very spirit of a brawling and pirating horde. And Cerberus was definitely one of the few who still _had_ any resources to spare for the Project.

Perhaps a year before all this insanity started, they had approached him. Garrus had just arrived on Omega when one of their agents had suddenly knocked on the door of his hotel room. Offering him a _job_ of all things. The woman would have certainly been pretty by human standards if not for the large burn scar that was marring the greater part of her face. She had given her best to be persuasive, talking about abducted human colonies and ominous threats to the galaxy. For a moment he had actually been tempted to take the job, but then something about her had put him off. Not the fact that she was standing there with a wound that couldn't be older than just a few weeks tops, but the dull emptiness in her eyes. The one that came after the desperation of reaching the end of your rope. Despite her brave words, she didn't believe in the success of her own mission and he knew better than to hire on a ship that was not only burning but also already sinking. There was one and just one person he would have followed into a losing game like this, and he would not dishonor her sacrifice just to walk into his certain death.

The image of the last time he had seen her flickered in his mind and he pushed it back into the abyss. Later.

"I wonder what has happened to Agent Lawson and her mission," Garrus mumbled to himself.

After the agent had left him, he felt that he needed to get away from anything human for a while. He texted a guy named Sidonis, whose life he had saved the other day that they had to postpone drinks and took the next ship bound to Palaven.

"What was that, Sir?"

"Nothing."

In the distance a Harvester screeched and Garrus quickly scanned the sky. There. He saw the beast to the north and it was quickly approaching his outpost.

_Damn, I definitely could use a good old krogan horde now._

"Watch the skies! Harvester inbound!" Garrus shouted.

From the south three fighters approached engaging the Harvester. Together their weapons tore through the abominations thick skin and it fell from the sky shrieking. The fighters veered back and suddenly a second Harvester lifted up into the sky behind them. The beast had waylaid them. It crashed into the last of the fighters, causing the small aircraft to fishtail. The other fighters turned to provide fire cover, yet before the hit pilot could regain control the now wounded Harvester attacked again, clawing into the engine. The fighter exploded, taking the Harvester with him; two fires blooming in the sky.

He closed his eyes. This time he couldn't keep the memory from forcing its way into his mind.

Fire was blooming in the sky as bit by bit the Normandy exploded. He had tried to grab for her hand but the shock wave of another explosion had pushed her away before he could reach her. For a few seconds his brain simply refused to process what was happening and then someone pulled him back and the door's automatic lock down had kicked in.

"NO!" Garrus yelled, his fists pounding against the air lock with no avail. But was unable to do anything. He could only watch. Watch how the woman, who had just some minutes ago stole a kiss from him in the aisle leading towards the CIC, fell through fire and debris towards Alchera's frozen surface.

The image of her body rapidly vanishing from his sight would forever be burned into his mind.

But the worst? The worst was that Garrus never had the chance to tell her how much he loved her…

* * *

~V~

* * *

The woman that had once been Shepard sat on the ground hugging her knees, and stared out of the observation point located at the top of the strange station. In front of her a sheer endless field of debris swirled around a black disk, slowly drawn in to be destroyed beyond any retrieval. It was the only place where she could found a resemblance of peace, while lost in the vast infinity of the black hole's all consuming nothingness.

How long since she had woken here? Weeks? Months? The blank in her mind were memories should have been made next to impossible to judge the passing of time. That nothing ever changed in the routines on this space station wasn't helping either. The Collectors just existed; they did not _live_. They had no art, no culture, nothing that would indicate even traces of a sentient being. Like insects they just bustled about, forever caught in their instinct-driven, clock-like routines. The sheer monotony would have driven her up the walls - if she only would have been able to recall that it bothered her in the first place.

Her scarred hand brushed up her bare arm. At least she thought of it as bare – even though the greater part of her actual skin was gone now. She flexed her fingers. Small pointed plates, made of some dull, anthracite colored metal, pushed through the gray, faintly purplish skin covering her knuckles. If she made a fist, the half an inch long triangles would make a formidable brass knuckles substitute. The same metal had been used to enforce other parts of her skeleton; sometimes running invisible under her flesh, sometimes breaking through her skin, either to form a protective ridge, as the one covering her spine or to become a weapon like the one inch long, slightly sickle-shaped tips that protruded from the nailbed of her fingers.

Absently, she clicked with the claws of her left hand over the strange piece of armor attached to her upper arm. Something about it… But she couldn't remember either. It was as if a _pressure_ prevented her from going there and the more she pushed the more painful the pressure grew…

She dropped the thought. Someone… Yes someone was approaching her location. She shifted her legs but kept sitting, the implants that had seamlessly merged with her flesh and skin glowing a barely visible blue in the dark of the unlit room. Thinking… thinking was difficult with all those creatures crowding her mind.

_Is this how the rachni queen feels?_

For a second the shredded images of a snow covered peek hovered in her mind. Of fighting a blue skinned alien and embracing another blue skinned alien that was crying. Like a kaleidoscope rotated about, the images fell apart and the question vanished once more without being answered.

The presence she had felt before closed in, accompanied by the soft click-click of insect-like limbs hitting the ground. The large Collector came to a halt next to her and the veil that had shrouded its mind vanished.

This one was different than the rest of the Collectors. Not just in shape and size but also for its thoughts. They were precise, rational; and not merely a random dump of urges or incoherent flashes like the others. There was an alien but surprisingly sharp, even sophisticated brain dwelling behind those uncaring compound eyes. These days… she often found herself clinging to the small piece of sanity Harbinger's presence provided in the storm of chaos that raged in her mind.

She untangled her legs and got up, then rested a hand on its large insectoid head. Physical contact somehow made it less weird to establish a connection with the Collector.

_SOON. _

The electrodes below her scalp tingled as she picked up Harbinger's thought. She clenched her jaws and suppressed the initial urge to claw into her matted hair and pull out the cables that would enhance the signal.

_OUR ARMIES WILL ARRIVE SOON. BE READY._

She nodded and left the Collector behind to seek a pack of drones to hone her hand-to-hand combat skills. She might not fully understand Harbinger's reasons for war but she understood the need to fight.

Quickly, she made her way towards the heart of the station, ignoring the forms that floated in yellow, egg-shaped cocoons. Not long ago those aliens had tried to destroy her home. Smiling she remembered licking her lips and tasting the stray drops of blood belonging to the dark-haired human woman with the large sad eyes and the scarred face. It had been a pleasure to rip out the woman's heart and watch the life vanish from her eyes, while the torrent of red claimed her once white suit.

All of a sudden, a tiny stab twisted her heart. Even while she had gloried in releasing her rage at the intruders, she couldn't deny that there had been something else. Buried deep down she had felt a profound wrongness at her actions, an awful and horrible sadness.

Regret.

Pain.

Loss.

Fire. She remembered that there had been fire.

And suddenly the memory of a low throaty voice hovered on the edge of her mind. A warm shiver run down her back as it whispered a name.

_Shepard._

Her name.


	3. Chapter: The last link

**Chapter 3 ~ The last link**

Husks.

She positively hated those husks.

There was something so profoundly _wrong_ about them, it made her feel like sickening up whenever her awareness stumbled upon them.

They weren't animated corpses by strict definition, for their creation inevitably needed a living host, but she suspected that somewhere along the horrible transformation process they all _did_ die, leaving behind nothing but a pile of flesh forced into functioning by tech. An empty shell.

Where the Collectors at least had their incoherent jumble of thoughts – which at times even showed a most disturbing complexity despite their primitiveness – the mind of a husk contained nothing. If she touched them… it was as if a black hole would spring up in her mind. Not a nothingness you would maybe expect from a, say, inanimate object, but an emptiness created by the complete and palpable absence of something that used to be there. As if she could feel the absence of life itself in them…

But Harbinger needed more husks and she, she would bring them to him.

Besides, it was her first chance to get off the station so she jumped straight at it like a starved man at a heel of old bread. She didn't care where he was sending her. She only cared that this trip would disrupt her days' monotony which was caging her like mind in a never-ending nightmare.

Arms crossed before her body, she stood on the bridge of the Collector's biggest battleship. The armor she had donned a few hours back glistened in the lights of the ships' control unit like the multi-hue blackish carapace of a beetle. And just like a carapace the armor fit her like a second skin, hugging her body. She hadn't been able to penetrate the slightly elastic but durable material with one of her knives and was all that counted. It even made her ignore the two inch high and curved metal spikes that ran along the outsides of her forearms and calves, like the serrated crest of a dragon.

Two guns were sitting snugly in their holsters strapped to each thigh, but of lately she had troubles remembering them. Using them felt… strange somehow. More distanced. Killing with them seemed less real; lacking the unique feel of the very essence of life draining from the dying into her – and with the husks in her head she needed every reminder to convince herself that she was still alive.

Impassively, she glanced at the drone that sat in the pilot seat before her, enabled with just enough intelligence to receive Harbingers' orders and operate the controls. For a moment she struggled against the almost overpowering need to draw one of her twin combat knives sheathed on the small of her back and drive it into the vulnerable spot where the insectoids' spine connected with its skull. She shook her head, dwarfing the surging blood lust. Too long. It had been too long since she had been able to sink her blades into an enemy.

She tore her thoughts away from the drone and dropped into the copilots' seat, adjusting the large monitor before her to bring up the view outside.

They flew through a veil of debris that shrouded the space station. Not just any debris but pieces of broken vessels and tech; a mass grave for countless ship wrecks, forever caught in the black holes gravitation and deemed to rotate slowly into oblivion. Some of them seemed ancient, the last remnants of civilizations that were gone for so long that no one even remembered their names. Others were new, though. Very new.

On the monitor a big part of a large, sleek hull drifted lost through the vacuum of space. She frowned at it and a weird feeling of familiarity reached out and...

_Mandy. What a ridiculous name for a ship, indeed, _she thought dismissively and shied away from the tiny bit of memory that had threatened to rise from its abyss.

If she had learned one thing then that there was nothing but pain waiting at the end of this.

* * *

_Screw that goddamn sun._

She retreated from the open airlock, and squeezed her watering eyes shut. After so much time spent in the dark of space, the suns' merciless glare stabbed into her skull like a hot poker. With an angry growl, she forced her lids to open and jumped down the ten feet drop before the gangway had even started to unfold.

With a low thud, she landed on the soft, short clipped grass in a crouch, her head darting around to assess the perimeter. A ring of two-storied container-like buildings framed the plaza, Harbinger's pilot drone had selected for the landing. Or better, it would have been a ring, if the landing hadn't destroyed the nearest buildings behind them. The ship was big and the plaza was not.

Above her the warm sun shone down from a blue cloudless summer sky. Her eyes started to water again and her nostrils tickled. Absently she brushed away the tear with the back of her hand, giving the metal scraping against her skin no more than a stray thought.

_Must be the blasted light, _she thought wryly, while watching another seeker swarm taking off into the colony.

Not far ahead she suddenly heard panicked shouts and gunfire. She stretched out her awareness, feeling the presence of a dozen drones ahead. With a tiny evil grin she straightened and started to jog towards them. The scouts were already making an impression. She wouldn't want to miss the show.

With a small shudder she sensed Harbinger taking control of a drone. She looked back and saw him leading a platoon of thirty Collectors in the direction the seeker swarm had taken. At the ship, another platoon started to unload the cocoons for transporting the captured humans. They would fan out after the vanguard, picking up the paralyzed humans. Something in her stomach revolted at the notion but she had already fallen into an easy run, she would be able to maintain for hours, her thoughts painfully focused on the fights ahead.

She felt for the direction her scouts had taken and set out to turn right at the next intersection in the maze of buildings. She rounded the corner. So far she hadn't encountered any humans and… she skittered to a halt. To her left another row of those uniform beige containers stretched, yet the one she now stood before featured a big window front, metalized to keep out the sun. In its reflection stood a monster.

Sleek and long limbed it was roughly human in shape, with a multi-shaded, dark violet carapace-like armor covering most of its slender body. The suit bore slight resemblance to a Collector drone, defining jutting ribs and muscle cords that gave the grotesque impression of looking at a body that had just been skinned. Pointed crests and sharp edges protruded from its arms and legs, most attached to the armor. But a few others, she knew, were growing straight out from the very bone. Just like the thick, five inch long spike that protruded from the back of the forearm and ran along the outstretched arm, protecting the elbow.

Brownish hair that she somehow knew used to be blonde hung down to the shoulders in a tangle of thick felted strands, sheltering a frightening amount of wires grown into the scalp.

But the worst, the worst was the face the hair framed.

It used to be human but no human's skin was of this grayish, somewhat purple paleness. The lips were too dark, as if the blood that gave them their color had turned from red to some dark goo. There… was no iris. Only huge black pupils that stared back at her so impassive and soulless, like gateways to a hell a hundred times worse than the most horrible nightmares her mind could have ever devised. A long ragged scar was running from the hairline above the right eye, over the bridge of the nose, down to the left jaw line.

She stepped closer, clawed fingers turning the head sideward and exposing the neck. She pulled down the neckline of the suit. Spreading out from below the collarbones was a mass of black veins, branching upwards until they seemed to cup the face with their thin tendrils. Scattered through the tangle and glittering innocently in the sunlight were the telling metallic inclusions of Reaper made tech. Horrified she let go of the hem.

_Saren… His name was Saren… _

With a guttural howl she slammed her biotically charged fists against the window, shattering the mirror image. Her head spun and she dug her fingers into her temples. Frantically she gulped. All of a sudden her throat seemed too tight to let in any air.

That was when she heard the noise. The click of a safety coming off. She swirled around, unsheathing the twin knives in one fluid and inhumanly fast motion, dropping into a fighting stance. Biotic energy was licking her hands and forearms, tiny bolts of blue lightning even dancing up the blades.

A soldier wearing an armor bearing a familiar emblem had exited the next building, a gun in his hands. He was a handsome one, lean muscular built that spoke of endurance and speed rather than brute force, short black hair, and serious brown eyes. And then _something_ happened. Eyes wide, his expression turned from surprise into shock. The pistol in the soldier's hand trembled and his lips moved silently to mouth a single word.

Those awfully serious brown eyes… They had always seemed to hold a silent, barely subdued pain in them. In another life, she had believed she could be the remedy for that pain, that she could bring back the joy to those eyes but…

She groaned and retreated one step, a flash of images stabbing her brain behind her eyes, pushing through the block that lay upon her memory. Images of a younger version of this man, his face covered in mud, crawling next to her through an obstacle course. Of sneaking away from the compound to get a tattoo. Of kissing those soft lips and spending one night in passion. Of many more nights spent with angry arguments and bringing each other misery. Of…

She clawed her way out of the catatonia. It all had happened within seconds. The soldier was still staring at her in disbelief when suddenly a group of five colonists, armed with assault rifles and shotguns, emerged from the building behind him.

"God help us all..." one man said, horror twisting his face. "What is this thing?"

"It's…" the soldier, whose name she still couldn't recall, begun softly. "It's something that isn't supposed to exist…"

Recognition, sadness, pain. She saw it all playing across his features. And then determination overruled it all.

"Kill it."

No more than a whisper, those two words, coming from a man who once claimed to love her, cut so deeply into her soul, they severed the last remaining link to her humanity. He pulled the trigger and she screamed.

Not in hurt but in sheer outrage.

A barrier flashed in place, catching his bullet. Then another. And another. The colonists started shooting and she scattered them with a biotic blast. The man who had spoken before went down writhing, his skin eaten away by the destructive energies.

She yanked at the invisible chains that tied the Collectors' minds to hers, drawing them to her location. The soldier tried to hit her with his own biotics but she deflected the sphere with a flick of her wrist. He wanted to kill her? He would die trying!

The first drone dropped from the sky and fell to the shotgun of a red haired woman. Two more approached and then the woman was screaming and clutching her stomach, trying frantically to hold on to her innards that wanted to escape through the hole one of the Collectors had ripped into her abdomen.

She stepped towards the soldier, her mind mad with her own rage and the jumbled thoughts and impressions of the half a dozen Collectors that had come to fight nearby. He never backed up. Not even when her first knife pushed through the weak point that connected the breast plate with the shoulder.

And not even when the second slid into his throat.

She pushed him against the wall to keep him from falling. Pain had conquered his beautiful face once more and she leaned in, touching his cheek with her fingers; watching solemnly how the life drained out of his eyes. Too late she felt the hard metal pressing against her abdomen. He closed his eyes and then the shot came.

Agony flared, spreading out from her middle into her whole body. Her knees gave way and she let go of the soldier. He slipped down the wall. Tumbling she fell. The pain was trying to shut down her body, yet she dug her fingers into the soft soil of the lawn, trying to push herself forward, although she didn't even know where she was supposed to go. He limbs went numb and her face hit the soft grass. It smelled of summer rain. Summer. She had loved summer, hadn't she?

_Help me…_

She couldn't tell how long she was lying in the puddle of her own blood, her body shaken by cramps. Somehow it simply refused to went into a hemorrhagic shock and let her die. Suddenly she felt movement and the agony in her stomach erupted to a new height. She groaned, too weak to scream. Someone was carrying her away. She struggled against the weight of her lids and saw the triangular head of a Collector towering above her.

_I TOLD YOU SO…_ Harbinger suddenly said in her mind. _THEY ARE VERMIN. KILL THEM BEFORE THEY KILL YOU.._.

She didn't bother with arguing. The comforting sensation of his presence finally lured her body into relaxation, taking away the pressure. Before her mind slipped into unconsciousness though, a tiny question rose from the back of her head.

_What am I? _

There was no answer.

_Damn you! Answer me! _

Silence. And then he said,

_YOU ARE THE FUTURE._

Blissful darkness engulfed her.


End file.
